Boagie,
First of all, I'm honestly not exactly sure what you mean by germ plasma. I've really only run across that word used in reference to grains -- certainly never in the medical or medical scientific literature. But that's immaterial. If you're referring to the liquid, macromolecular, ionic, and energetic constituents of cells, then from a purely biological and biochemical point of view consciousness is a nonissue. Every biological system is to some degree energetically inefficient, but every biological system requires energy to function and to maintain itself. A self-regulating biological system that self-regulates by virtue of certain mechanisms is not conscious any more than your thermostat is conscious by turning on or off your AC based on room temperature.
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Originally Posted by VideCorSpoon  If you take 2000 mg of vitamin C a day, you are doing your body a great service because vitamin C is proven to fight most of these things. |
Aside from the fact that that is a potentially toxic dose, there is a massive meta-analysis by the Cochrane database that shows almost no benefit to vitamin C supplementation (in a well-nourished population without dietary deficiency) except a clinically meaningless shortening of URI duration (under 24 hours). And that is the best evidence there is -- nothing is more comprehensive or rigorous than the Cochrane database. But considering that vitamin C, being a supplement, is not regulated by the FDA, people make all kinds of hyperbolic statements about it that are completely unfounded. And for every weak 'beneficial' trial you show me about vitamin C, I can match you with non-beneficial trials of similar quality.
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But keep your eye out for a drug called resveritrol. This is the golden pill that is really supposed to extend your life by twenty to thirty years. Its made from grapes skin and fights inflammation and fungal propagation.
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We're all interested to see what comes of resveritrol, but hold your horses on the twenty to thirty year prediction. I can tell you that I will never prescribe it or even recommend it until we have good efficacy and safety data, and for the moment we have neither. The problem with overhyping drugs is we get into the scenarios we've had with Vioxx, with torcetrapib, with hormone replacement therapy, with SSRIs in children, etc. In other words, we miss the harm a drug can cause and can grossly overestimate its benefit until high quality data come in. And even if resveritrol can make lab rats live forever, it doesn't matter until large scale trials are done in humans.